The other injuries

While we've never had an ER visit for any of the kids up until this weekend, it's not quite accurate to say that we've been accident-free up until then.

In July 2009 when Logan was 3.5, he somehow fell off a bike and into the bike petal at daycare and basically had a puncture wound right next to his eye. The director called me in a panic because she just assumed he needed stitches and just knew I'd need to get him to a doctor right away. It was gross and scary because it was a gaping wound so close to his eye, so I admit to freaking out a little lot.



I took him straight to urgent care where they cleaned him up, but they almost sent us to the ER for stitches, since urgent care doesn't do the sedation required on pediatric patients when stitches are required. Fortunately, they were able to use dermabond (lots and lots of it) to close the wound, so our ER bullet was dodged that time.

Almost a year later when Aidan was in kindergarten, he was playing outside and gashed his scalp open on a nail (or something??) underneath the playset. His teacher called me in a panic because she couldn't get it to stop bleeding. By the time I got there, the bleeding had mostly subsided and I got him right to urgent care where he got two staples in his head to close the gash. After the incident with Logan, I wasn't quite as freaked out over this wound, since Aidan was a bit older, not super upset about it, and I just know that scalps tend to bleed a lot even on fairly minor wounds. Calm Mommy award goes to me on that one. :) It still turned my stomach to look at it, though.

But Lorelai still wins the dubious prize for causing the biggest parental freakout (I guess she wins that award x2 if you count the pregnancy scare I had...little stinker!) because of the nature of her injury and the unknown that's involved with head injuries. As much as I cringe to think about blood, etc., I'll take a superficial wound over possible brain damage any day.

But note to the universe: that is most definitely NOT a request for more injuries. Let's see if we can go at least another 2.5 years before we see another ER or urgent care. I need time to replenish my insurance health fund after what I'm sure will be a large ER bill...

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